The 50 best IPAs in America

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. “Hey,” said one of DRAFT’s editors in early May, “We haven’t reviewed IPAs in a while. Why don’t we get a bunch of breweries to send some in and rank them, a la our big pumpkin beer tasting last October?”

We expected a decent response from the brewers we emailed asking for submissions. We did not expect to get nearly 400 IPAs in total. But the boxes of bottles, cans, crowlers and growlers (and even a couple plastic soda bottles) kept coming. In the end, our fridge was stocked with 386 IPAs from every region of the country, as well as a few from outside the States. For perspective, there were 312 entrants in the American IPA category at the 2016 Great American Beer Festival—the largest beer competition in the country.

Why go so big on IPA? As any bar owner or brewer paying attention will tell you, it’s far and away the most popular style among drinkers who enjoy better beer. The numbers back this up: According to market research group IRI, which tracks sales at grocery and convenience stores, sales of IPA have climbed from 8.9 percent of the total volume of Brewers Association-defined “craft” beer in 2011 to 25.2 percent in 2016. Get that? More than quarter of all the craft beer sold last year was IPA. And while substyles like session IPA and fruit IPA have bit into the total share somewhat, regular old American IPA is still king of the mountain, accounting for 76.4 percent of total IPA sales last year.

But more than that, nearly every brewery in existence makes an IPA. Knowing who’s doing it the best can be helpful when seeking out new breweries to visit.

Plus, we just really like IPAs.

Our judges and process
In preparing for this thing, we looked to some of our beer-writing peers for best practices; Paste Magazine and its tasting of 247 IPAs last year gave us a great rubric in terms of the structure and size of the tasting. As with every review we’ve ever published, the IPAs were tasted blind (meaning the folks drinking them had no knowledge of what they were drinking) by our panel of judges, all of whom are either Certified Cicerones or Beer Judge Certification Program veterans with a certified, national or master ranking. (One of our tasters is even BJCP and Cicerone-certified.)

While large, the selection of IPAs represented here is by no means exhaustive (with more than 5,000 breweries now active in the U.S., you gotta figure that there are at least 5,000 IPAs to try, right?). But we did our best to make it exhaustive, anyway. We emailed every brewer in our database to ask for submissions sent directly from the brewery to our office (which is how we got a vast majority of them). For brewers we couldn’t contact or who didn’t get back to us, we tried to grab bottles and cans through trades and at local stores. Inevitably, some great breweries will have fallen through the cracks, but we’re pretty proud of the collection we were able to assemble.

Since freshness is paramount in hop-focused styles like IPA, we gathered the beers throughout a single month and tackled the giant job of reviewing all 386 by setting up small daily tastings based on the time they arrived, so no beer spent more than a week in the fridge after arriving at our office. Once tasted, the beers were given a score out of 100, which we used to determine their placement.

What the tasting taught us
Here’s the thing about IPAs: Even within a style whose parameters in terms of color, alcohol content, bitterness and otherwise have generally been agreed upon, there’s a ton of variability. We tasted IPAs as clear as glass and as murky as gravy; as pale as straw and as dark as copper; as sweet as fruit juice and as bitter as, well, hops. They ranged in ABV from a floor of 4.8% to a ceiling of 7.8%; their hop flavors covered everything from grass, pine, orange, grapefruit to blueberries, cantaloupe and cannabis.

But a couple truths did reveal themselves as we experienced our Lupulin Threshold Shifts. First, haze is the new normal. A vast majority of the beers we tasted were at least partly cloudy; many were downright opaque. Clear, bright beers were so few and far between, in fact, that it became a pleasant surprise whenever they popped up. That said, haziness alone does not a great IPA make. Some brewers are still struggling to capture the juicy qualities of the still-somehow-controversial New England IPA.

So what makes a winning IPA? The versions that made our top 50 all have clearly defined, vibrant hop character and a malt character that, while present, stays mostly out of the while. While hop flavor and aroma varied, we generally preferred beers that kept things tropical, oniony, citrusy or dank. Plus, there had to be enough bitterness to remind us that we’re drinking an IPA. Of course, the answer to that question is different for every brewer and every drinker, and there was something to like about all the IPAs we tasted.

Here are all 336 entrants that didn’t make our top 50, listed alphabetically:

*We limited the beers included in this tasting strictly to IPAs—no fruit additives and no wild, Belgian or lager yeast strains. We made exceptions for breweries that only brew lagers or ferment with Belgian or wild yeast.

Whew. Now that that’s all out of the way, let’s get to the top 50. The next page has IPAs 50-26; page 3 contains the top 25. Read on, hopheads.

I had Fashionably Late as well. Everyone I know who tasted it, including myself, thought that it was a poor effort to put it mildly. And Golden Road at 13!!!! What the hell is that?!? Very suspicious of this so called list.

Pliny’s 8% ABV, which we consider the threshold for imperial IPA. We’ll definitely have to hold a tasting for imperial IPAs in the future, but it won’t be for a while—we’re all a bit tired of hops at the moment.

Eddyline Epic Day Double IPA is the best IPA I’ve ever had. The Crank Yanker is okay, but the Epic Day is phenomenal. I’ve tried many on this list and will try some new ones this review mentions but until then, I’m sticking to what I know is the best.

Just goes to show that what people like in an IPA can be highly variable. Have had a few of the west coast beers on your top 50 list and IMO none of them are better than 2 that you tasted but didn’t make the top 50 (Boneyard RPM and Deschutes Fresh Squeezed).

One that you missed was the Ancestry Piney IPA. That is my absolute favorite. Small Portland, OR brewery. You should check it out when you can.

It seems to me that key Portland, Oregon area breweries, some key San Diego area breweries, and some San Francisco Bay area breweries were not among the participants. Quaff a couple IPAs from Portland and/or San Diego for a better perspective. Also piney/resiny hops seem to have been disqualifiers, when they are part of the hops flavor profile for many delicious IPAs.

It seems to me that key Portland, Oregon area breweries, some key San Diego area breweries, and some San Francisco Bay area breweries were not among the participants. Quaff a couple IPAs from Portland and/or San Diego for a better perspective. Also piney/resiny hops seem to have been disqualifiers, when they are part of the hops flavor profile for many delicious IPAs.

So glad to see all three submissions from my favorite local brewery, Back East Brewing in Bloomfield CT do so well. They are a sleeper for fantastic beers and deserve the accolades for sure! Congratulations to Tony and the entire staff there. They work tremendously hard to produce and present true world class beers to the public. Keep up the good work Back East!!! Congratulations!!!

I would like to purchase a large selection of IPAs for my husband as a Christmas present. One of his favorites is lost gold. I have searched for many of the names on this list but cannot find ways to purchase any of them. Does anybody know if it’s a possibility? If so, how? TIA

This just proves not to pay attention to “top 50” lists unless just looking for variety. I’ve only had 1 on the top 50 list -Jai Lai Cigar City. It’s good but I’ve had much better that are much much better. At any rate, good to have quality beers on the radar.